Hello internals, I've had this little library for a while (https://github.com/withinboredom/time), mostly as a place to experiment with the quirks of PHP and take it in weird places. Anyway, I've been experimenting with "strongly typed time" in attributes for a while now. At this point, it's a little weird but doable to use something like this:
#[MyAttribute(units: StandardSecond, amount: 5)] ... which is less than ideal. What I would really like is this: #[MyAttribute(5 * StandardSecond)] PHP doesn't support operator overloading, which, from the last RFC attempt, probably won't for quite a long time. Thus, I started experimenting with extending the \GMP class, which is perfectly allowed since it isn't final. For those that don't know, GMP implements operator overloading such that a GMP number times an int results in a new GMP number. Surprisingly, I can get this to work, but I end up with a GMP number -- with the right value -- but not the right type. Hence this email. In essence, I am attempting to "back-door" my way into having operator overloading. I would like to add static protected methods to the GMP class that are called for operations. In the event all objects are base-GMP objects, no behavior will change. So, here are my questions: - for built-in extensions, does this need an RFC? - does anyone have any strong opinions against having the ability to have actual, typed units in PHP? - should we revisit operator overloading instead of me hacking my way into it? - should we revisit "constant expressions" in attributes? — Rob
